Flash mob!

December 30, 2010

A flash mob of 75 dancers does its thing Oct. 1 on the campus of Oregon State University in Corvallis. (Andy Cripe, Corvallis Gazette-Times)

Every fad has its golden window, the period between Wow and Enough already. So it is with flash mobs, those hit-and-run performances that keep springing up in food courts, produce aisles, public parks, transit stations — any place, basically, with a sizable and unsuspecting audience.

They're delightful, for now. One minute you're standing in line at the Southwest Airlines ticket counter and the next minute you're clapping with glee as employees abandon their work stations to line dance to "Rocking Around the Christmas Tree." Is that cool or what?

Thousands of videos, many recorded via cell phones held by astonished bystanders, are posted on the Internet. There's a scene in Macy's shoe department at Miami's Dadeland Mall, as members of the Florida Grand Opera belt out "Toreador" while brandishing stiletto pumps. There's a two-minute choreographed dance number starring everyone in sections 209 and 210 at the United Center during a second-quarter Bulls timeout. And of course there's the mother of all flash mobs — hundreds of people frozen in mid-step, for five long minutes, at New York's Grand Central Station.

The drill goes like this: Show up at a designated time, blend into the scene inconspicuously, stage an outburst of some sort and fade back into the crowd.

Pure flash mobs, like the Grand Central caper, are organized via social media, on short notice, for no apparent reason. Think dozens of people in a crowded subway car, talking into bananas. The newer stunts are often polished productions billed as "random acts of culture."

One of the more popular videos—the "Hallelujah Chorus" from Handel's "Messiah," performed by Chorus Niagara at a mall food court in Welland, Ontario — took eight weeks of planning and seven hidden cameras. Don't miss it. An equally impressive performance of the same piece by an unidentified choral group was captured via cell phone in the checkout area of the Daphne, Ala., Wal-Mart. Don't miss that one, either.

In the holiday season especially, when the targeted crowds tend to be large and grumpy, these inventive interruptions feel like a gift. Let's keep it that way.

The concept already has been co-opted for commercial purposes (most famously by T-Mobile), to hype upcoming events or to raise money. There have been mobs to protest the BP oil spill and to demand that Chicago's mayoral candidates articulate their arts platforms. A group in Australia reprised the Grand Central Station freeze mob "to remind people living in the relative safety of Australia why the laws of war, like the Geneva Conventions, are so vitally important," as one participant explained. Oh, lighten up.

It's going to take some imagination to keep this trend from going south fast. We think a flash mob could liven things up at the driver's license bureau, for example, or during intermission at the theater, when the line for the ladies' room is snaking through the lobby. How about a mob that specializes in drive-by good deeds, like passing out coffee at the bus stop or snatching cell phones on the "L"? Never mind about an elaborate song-and-dance routine. There's snow on the way. Come shovel our block.